


Parts and Poems

by lonelywalker



Category: Brothers & Sisters
Genre: Jossed, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:14:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-<i>Taking Sides</i>. Henry tries to take Saul's mind off his family's myriad crises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parts and Poems

_…these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul…  
\- Walt Whitman_

A brand-new toothbrush in his bathroom, the plastic packaging lying ripped apart in the trash. A name entered in his cellphone, typed out by careful fingers on tiny keys. A silver pin on his lapel, fastened there as a thirty-day beard scratched his jaw, and smirking lips caught his.

While Saul has been learning to love Henry Mittner, his life has become fuller by degrees – tiny reminders, never enough to be intrusive, that there's someone new in the world who cares about him. Someone impartial in all Walker family crises. Someone who, even now, is looking curiously at a ringing phone amid chaos and picking up just because Saul needs him.

"Hello?"

There's chatter in the background – swarms of people gathered around tables, glasses in hand, carrying out the kinds of idle discussions that might well last for hours. Saul considers hanging up, and blaming it later on a bad connection. It had taken him enough willpower just to dial the number, to choose to reach out rather than pour himself more wine and hope that Henry might slip into bed with him sometime before dawn. He has little idea of what to say and, even if he were given to pouring his heart out, doing it by phone late in the evening while Henry's trying to work is hardly…

"Hi," he makes himself say. "Is this a bad time?"

Henry must have ducked out into the kitchen, because the buzz of conversation behind him has lessened considerably, replaced by the occasional clatter of crockery and glasses. "Not too bad. We're starting to wrap things up. How was your dinner?"

Saul sinks down onto his couch, pushing up his glasses so that he can rub at the bridge of his nose. Of _course_ a Walker family dinner is of greater potential significance than even a fundraiser Henry's been planning for months. Or, more likely, Henry simply knows the significance of an unexpected phone call at this time of night. "Well. The usual. You know. Ah… can I come and help? How long are you going to be there?"

"That really depends on how strongly I hint to everyone that they should leave… I'm considering spraying some industrial-strength cleaning fluid around the room and calling some cabs." He sounds tired, but far more upbeat than Saul could hope for on even a good day. "I'll come to you when I'm finished. Probably an hour or two? I don't want to keep you up."

"I'll be up," Saul says, just a little too quickly.

There's the briefest of pauses, and Saul can imagine Henry leaning back against the kitchen wall, scratching his jaw, glancing at his watch. "Okay. I'll see you soon."

And then there's that _I love you_ gap that has yet to be filled with actual words.

***

As the minutes drag by, and the cable news network's stories begin to repeat themselves, Saul starts to wonder if someone else might just stop by to disrupt his evening – Kevin or Sarah with a legal brainwave, Justin seeking a quiet couch and well-stocked fridge, even Nora returning to apologize (or, more likely, to begin a second round of arguments and recriminations). He's drowsy by the time a key turns in the door, and is on his feet, startled at the interruption, before he realizes that it is Henry, after all.

Henry, carrying a bottle of wine, and looking absolutely dead on his feet. "Hey Saulie," he says with a grin, and shuts the door.

He smells of detergent and alcohol when Saul stumbles over to greet him, tastes of it too… Their kisses aren't quite comfortable yet, but, tired as he is, Saul doesn't pull away.

"Are you drunk?" he asks with a faint smile, well aware that he's probably consumed far more tonight than Henry would ever touch.

"Mm. I wish. I've spent the evening being hit on by every middle-aged woman in California." Henry thrusts the bottle into Saul's hands. "Here, I salvaged this from the wreckage. Tell me everything."

Saul spends more time examining the bottle than he suspects he, in all politeness, really should. "No… You need to get some sleep. A _shower_ and some sleep."

"Baby, do you know how much coffee I've had today?" Henry slips past him to the couch, where he casts a critical eye over the scrolling news headlines on the television, and begins to lever off his shoes. "Besides, you sounded as though you had something you needed to get off your chest."

Were he a more fiercely private person, or if he cared less about this man, he might object to the way that Henry just instinctively _owns_ the apartment the moment he enters it, as if he lives here. As if he's _always_ lived here. In the circumstances, however, it's oddly reassuring.

Saul sits down next to him, a hand casually stroking down Henry's back. "Just family politics. I've already told you most of it."

"One nephew going to jail, another appearing out of the blue?" Henry sits back with a sigh, tugging Saul closer to him. "So what changed? You seemed pretty calm about it all this morning."

 _This morning_ , when he'd woken up in sunlight with his head pressed to Henry's chest. Everything had been so deceptively simple then, with the assurance that the Ojai legal case would be resolved before Nora ever got wind of it, and his own confidence that Ryan would quickly become bored with the Walker side of his family and return to his university studies. What a difference a few hours has made.

"I underestimated just how much…" Saul sighs. He doesn't want to have this conversation, not when the evening has suddenly started to offer so many more possibilities, each culminating in going to bed with Henry's arms around him. "Nora blamed me, can you believe that? Her children are running around embezzling millions and keeping it from her, and she blames me."

Henry reaches for Saul's empty glass, and the wine bottle. "It does suck to be the responsible adult sometimes."

Saul watches him unscrew the top. A cheap bottle, of course, but probably effective enough. "You agree with her?"

"No, but I understand her. Saulie, you're her big brother. She expects you to protect her…"

"That's exactly what I _was_ doing."

"There's having someone's back, and there's packaging them in bubblewrap." Henry sips on the wine, grimaces, and gulps it down regardless. "She was always going to find out. Sometimes you need to give people all the information, even if it's scary, because they have to deal with the problem either way. They might as well be equipped and ready to fight." He shoves the glass back onto the table and swings his legs up onto the couch, collapsing into Saul's lap and looking up at him with a weary grin. "I may be mixing metaphors. Occupational hazard."

Saul can't help barking out a laugh. Henry's hair's just getting long enough for him to tangle his fingers in it, feeling the remnants of gel on glossy dark strands. "I don't deserve you."

"There's no deserve about it," Henry says wryly. "I was a single gay man in my sixties with no time and increasingly limited dating opportunities. I'm only glad I met you before some hot young stud."

"You _are_ my hot young stud…" Saul objects, finally smiling a little as he pulls Henry's shirt free of his slacks. He sighs, feeling himself starting to relax, despite the topic of conversation. "She said I hadn't changed. That I'm still more comfortable dealing in lies than the truth."

"Are you?"

Saul's hand rubs over Henry's abs, envying their youthful definition, feeling tiny hairs curling up against his fingertips. "A lifetime's habit is hard to break."

"Mmmm…" Henry raises his head to see what Saul's doing as he loosens his belt and nudges Saul's hand down lower. "I think you just need the proper motivation."

In years past, struggling with his sexual identity, Saul had taken solace in the idea that his desires would lessen with age, that living an almost-entirely celibate life would be easier, that attractive men wouldn't seem quite so attractive. Even as an out gay man, part of him had assumed that his relationship with Henry would be mostly cerebral. He's on the verge of his seventies. The very concept of his having a regular, energetic sex life had seemed as foreign to him as it might have seemed faintly distasteful to his nephews and nieces. But Henry… Henry had changed everything.

The first time Saul had held another man's cock in his hand, feeling the heat of it, the weight, he had experienced an overwhelming rush of sorrow that threatened to submerge even his desire. He _wanted_ this, this surge of need he felt, as Henry stiffened in his hand, as his own arousal became ever more apparent. He knew both that he could never give it up, and also that he had missed out on so much. So very much.

"You're a good man," Henry murmurs, his eyes half closed as his hips move to the gentle rhythm set by Saul's hand. "She loves you. They all love you. Everything will be fine."

Even in these circumstances, he can't help but object. "You don't know me as well as they do."

Henry's eyes blink open, curiously clear in the dim light of the room. "I know that you've never lied to me. You've never been anything but yourself from the first night we met."

Something in Saul wants to object, to undercut this apparently blind faith and show Henry how naïve he's being, but he says nothing, and his hand keeps moving as he finds a deep comfort in the responses of another man's body.

Henry's breathing is deep and steady, as though he's perfectly content to fall asleep in Saul's arms like this. But he eventually stirs, and yawns. "Come to bed with me?"

Those words had struck fear into him the first time, when he had been desperately afraid of being inadequate. Henry discards clothes with complete casualness, confident with his own body in a way Saul hasn't been since… Well. Has _never_ been, if he's honest. Age has very little to do with it. Even with the lights off in Henry's bedroom, he had been torn between the fear of repulsing his lover, and his own desperate desire to be touched. Only when Henry, laughing, had pinned him to the mattress, their bodies flush against each other until Henry began to kiss a trail down his stomach, had Saul let the tension of anticipation replace that of sheer terror.

"You need a shower," Saul points out, his hand lazily moving from Henry's cock to cup his balls. The way Henry just _lets_ him, the quiet ease of it, may never cease to amaze him.

Henry's hand, rough and warm, covers his.

***

Saul's strictly utilitarian attitude to the bathroom seems destined not to last the night as he stands in the doorway and watches Henry use the soap in a decidedly liberal manner.

"So the fundraiser was a success?" he asks, and has to repeat himself, either to be heard over the sound of the water, or due to Henry's incredulity that this, of all things, might be on his mind at the moment.

Henry nods, a shower of droplets spraying from his hair. "It was, I think. We'll only know for sure when we total the pledges… separate the checks from the trash."

For all his pretence at small talk, Saul is only half listening to the reply, his eyes on the smooth lines of Henry's body, the sharply defined muscles, the veins that stand out on his biceps and snake down to his groin. He's still not quite soft, and neither is Saul, watching Henry with the memory of tasting him in his mouth, the vague, lingering ghost of pleasure threatening to consume him again.

Henry stretches out a hand towards him, a knowing smile on his lips. "Come here," he says, and Saul can barely hear him, but that's hardly the point.

He's tugged under the gushing water, Henry making wet handprints on his face as they kiss and Henry tears off his already fogged-up glasses. He's too caught up in the intense warmth of it all, Henry's body hotter than the water, to notice the shirt plastered to his skin before Henry's hands move to undo the buttons. "God, Saul."

Henry's breath might as well be a mist of water against his cheek, and Saul grabs him by the biceps and _shoves_ him against the wall, astonished by his own aggression. Taller and fitter and younger he may be, but there's nothing in Henry that wants to fight back against this. Much to Saul's annoyance, he instead insists on substituting amusement for astonishment, pushing Saul's shirt back off his shoulders just as Saul begins to realize that his shoes aren't quite waterproof after all.

His bed is only a few feet away in the next room, and while his sheets might not appreciate two soaking wet men rolling all over them, they will at least _dry_. But… Saul has to admit that he quite likes the sight of Henry like this, wet and aroused and caught off guard for perhaps the first time in their entire relationship. And if he doesn't have wild, if slightly soapy, sex in the shower now, when will he ever?

"Henry," he says, because he still hasn't quite figured out how to say things like _I want you_ and _please_ , let alone _fuck me_.

And Henry – gorgeous, wise, wonderful Henry – pushes him into the corner of the shower and, with one hand on Saul's belt, drops down to his knees as if hard bathroom tiles are the most comfortable thing in the world.

Saul tilts his head back, closing his eyes, his breathing more ragged than it's been in years.

 _God._ He should have taken the phone off the hook.

***

"We should go somewhere."

The lights are still on, burning holes in Saul's eyelids, but he can't quite get together enough energy and motivation to stand up and find the off switch. It must be hideously early in the morning, now (raising his arm to check his watch seems like an extravagance), as they lie on Saul's bed, bodies steaming, fingers entwined.

"Somewhere?"

"Mm." Henry smears water out of his eyes. "Some friends of mine run a place down the coast. Only about an hour or so's drive. We can take my bike. Beat the traffic."

The idea of going anywhere on Henry's bike usually sounds like a suicide mission, but still… The weekend is looming, filled no doubt with frantic messages from Kevin and Sarah, and Nora either doing the same, or ignoring him entirely. "I'm not sure this is such a good time to take a vacation."

He can hear Henry roll over onto his side. "Saulie. Baby. I haven't had a day off in weeks, and if you keep letting your family get to you like this, Senator McCallister won't be the only one being rushed to the ER."

Saul mutters something that might possibly pass for an excuse as Henry kisses the side of his head.

"Come on. A couple of days on the beach would do you good. And your nephew isn't due back in court for weeks… what could possibly happen?"

"In this family?" Saul sighs and opens his eyes, conceding a little ground. "Isn't it still too cold to go swimming?"

That impish grin is back. "Who said anything about swimming? You, Mr. Holden, sorely need to be taught how to ogle twinks in Speedos. Besides, there's far more we can do on the beach…"

Raised eyebrows. "I thought the sand got everywhere."

"…not if you're doing it right."

Saul smacks him in the head with a pillow and, accompanied by the sound of Henry's laughter, gets up to start packing.


End file.
